I agree with the ethical stance and the sentiment 100%. And I also read the thread: https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/d6ZO7gXGYbQ.

The Core devs note there are massive financial incentives to bypass the public mempool via private relays and they don't want to encourage that with filtering. The risk from that is potentially catastrophic to Bitcoin as we know it, given how concentrated mining resources are already.

In the thread, DashJr refutes those claims to which one dev retorted: "I'll reply to your arguments when Ocean Pool reorgs a competitor block with inscriptions in it" which is completely unhelpful (to me, anyway) in determining if DashJr's refutations are correct or not.

The Core devs also note that Citrea in particular is using a workaround that bloats the UTXO set to embed data that "only" needs 144 bytes, which is what drove the OP_RETURN change idea to begin with.

I merely point this out because the discussion has become very polarizing and there is a lot of name calling and accusations flying around. But it is a nuanced discussion and requires a thoughtful approach.

On one hand, I love it because it's calling attention to some serious, long-standing issues (mining centralization, UTXO set bloat, Core monoculture, and apathetic hodling) that have been completely buried under NgU and "Incorruptible Digital Energy" narratives.

On the other, it's fostering tribalism and crushing open discussion, which are critical to ensuring the network can pull back from the brink of destruction embodied in:

5 pools controlling 80% of hash;

3 Chinese companies producing 99% of mining hardware; and

0.002% of hodlrs running nodes.

Your voice is important in the space. Mine is background noise.